Just shows how much you can learn from Twitter. I just read a Tweet that had this remarkable revelation: When you ask people to review your book — they do! Or some of them do, anyway. So — call me a fruitcake — I’m thinking of doing the same thing for Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. If any of you happen to have read my book and feel like you’d like to review it on Amazon — as in RIGHT HERE, one simple click away! — I shall not stop you.…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers! Here’s a story most of us can relate to, from mom of two Kelli Oliver George, whose funny, addictive blog is Rancid Raves. I LOST MY SON AT THE FAIR, BUT I FOUND HIM — SUPRISINGLY! NOT by Kelli Oliver George I thought about Free-Range Kids long and hard last night when I lost my 3.5-year-old at a huge, dusty county fair with thousands of folks milling around. My baby! Lost! The entire time I hunted for him, I kept repeating to myself what this site has been preaching: the statistics are actually LOW and realistically, he was…
Here is a great quote, lifted from The Week (my favorite magazine*), which lifted it from David Iganatius in The Washington Post. It points out that we have gotten so used to thinking in terms of preparing for the very worst, the very least likely scenarios, that that we don’t realize how overbearing (and often dumb) our safety measures have become. I was thinking the same thing today as I struggled to open the super-tamper-resistent seal on my can of whipped cream. I really was not that worried about someone tampering with my whipped cream. — L This September,…
Kudos to the Kansas City Star and reporters Eric Adler and Emily Van Zandt for their FRONT PAGE article yesterday (sent to use here by many readers — thanks!): “Statistics tell parents that the world is not so dangerous for their children” Listen to this! Despite the trepidation that naturally arises when releasing our kids into the big, bad world, statistics show that for the vast majority of American young people, their world isn’t as dangerous as it’s often made out to be. Tragedies — car crashes, serious sports injuries, childhood suicide, water accidents, to name a few –…
Hi Readers! This essay, from Leah R. Weiss Caruso, talks about the less visible side of Free-Range parenting. The part about letting our kids learn from their mistakes — and giving them the freeom to make mistakes at all. One of the chapters of my book is called, “Fail! It’s the New ‘Succeed!'” Leah, a Cleveland mom of three who runs the blog The Momma Rocks, is on the same track. — Lenore Raising the Free-Range YOU By Leah R. Weiss Caruso Much of what we read about raising Free-Range Kids is about the kind of activities kids are…
Okay, here is some weekend reading to sink your teeth into. It’s an article from the Economist: “Unjust and Ineffective: America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offenders. Does It Work?” The short answer is “No.” We are putting people on sex offender registries who do not belong there at all. People who peed in public. Streakers. Johns. Teenagers who had consensual sex. The registry does not discriminate between violent pedophiles and once-horny young folk who are now 30-year-old housewives, like one of the people profiled in the piece. Wendy Whitaker was 17 when she had sex (at school…
Just purchased, for 35 cents, a slim German text book last checked out of New York’s DeWitt Clinton High School in Feb. of 1931. (By Aaron Weiss, if you were wondering. It says so on the call slip.) What really got me is the “Law of the State of New York. Education Law – Section 1128” slapped there on the inside of the cover: “Whoever willfully detains any book or other property belonging to any Public Educational Institutition, shall be punished by a fine of not less than one or more than twenty five dollars or by inprisonment in jail…
Hi Readers! Here’s an honest reflection by writer/editor/mom of two, Denise Schipani, whose blog is Confessions of a Mean Mommy. The Bus Stop Conundrum: To Free-Range or Not Free-Range? By Denise Schipani Last fall, a new family moved into our neighborhood, and on the first day of school, there was a new girl at our little bus stop. They’d arrived at their house literally the day before school started. From Israel. That first day, the father took his little girl, Hadar, 6, to the stop. She wanted to take the bus (even though her English wasn’t very strong), and…
Hey, this is just terrific news! Eagle Place Townhomes in Colorado has lifted its ban that forbid ANY CHILD UNDER AGE 16 FROM PLAYING OUTSIDE WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION. Let’s hear it for the power of the press! An article in the Boulder Camera earlier this week highlighted the Townhomes’ bylaws that began, “While children bring such joy to our lives and we all love seeing them outside playing in their carefree world, we cannot have them unsupervised.” (Excuse me: Does that not sound EXACTLY like Dolores Umbrage in Harry Potter?) Anyway, one a spotlight shone bright on the anti-kiddie complex,…
Hi Readers — It’s summer! Time for kids to run around and ride their bikes and play like puppies till the moon shoos them home. Unless, that is, they’re living in the Eagle Place Townhomes in Lafayette, Colorado. There, no children are allowed to play outside, unsupervised, until age 16. That’s right. No kids. Outside. Without an adult. Period. That’s the new, written rule at the 60-home development and can you guess the reason given? Of course you can! You can recite it in your sleep! Quoth the property manager: “We just want them to be safe.” This article, in…